Grace Family Pizza

This one is a recipe I learnt from my father. When I was younger Mum always used to cook every day but Saturday, and that was when she'd get a break and Dad would take over. After several false starts I learned this recipe at the foot of the master, and then after making it properly once I immediately started messing with it. 

This does take a little while, but it's honestly not as much of a hassle as you might think - although things do get a little messy in the kitchen.

Step one is bloom the yeast.  All quantities here are for two pizzas.  Add a tablespoon of dried yeast to a big bowl, then add a tablespoon of sugar and a cup of warm - but not hot - water.  Cover the bowl with a teatowel so it's relatively dark in there and leave on the counter for 15 mins.

Then add about a teaspoon of salt and about two cups of flour.  Keep the flour out, you'll need it again. At this point you can mess with the recipe a little - some olive oil will give you better browning, some oregano will give you a herby crust, I've even substituted some flour for oat bran in the hopes of making a healthier crust.  Mix everything in with a spoon, then as it starts to come together switch over to your hands.  When things are inevitably too sticky, dust in some flour.  Work it into one lump then start pressing your fingertips/knuckles into it to make divots and then folding it over. You're trying to work some air into it as well as agitate the flour enough to form gluten, so you need to use a fair bit of pressure but try not to flatten it too much. You should probably do this on a floured work surface, but I'm lazy and just do it in the bowl.  Knead for 5-10 mins or so then shape into a ball, drizzle a tiny bit of olive oil on the ball to stop it drying out, then recover and leave to rise.  After about 30 mins it should have roughly doubled in size.

This is where some more room for experimentation comes in.  I've done a lot of research on pizza dough recipes and textures, and one technique that crops up a fair bit is to let it rise for a few hours (sometimes even overnight), then put it in the fridge for three days, then bring it out and let it come to room temperature, then proceed.  

I tried this once with about 8 hours in the fridge - the technique is to roughly cover it with cling wrap so it doesn't dry out in the fridge and then leave it. Thus far I have not had the foresight to start making pizza three days in advance of when I want to start eating it, but I am told the long, slow rise in the fridge improves both crust flavour and texture.  I must try that some time.  Anyway, back to the actual pizza I did make.

Grab your big doughball and twist it in two.  Reshape those into nice orbs and then press the centres to get a semi-toroid with a thin membrane in the middle instead of a hole.  With your hands make the toroid bigger for a bit, until it gets a little difficult to handle, then plop it down on a pizza stone or tray (any tray will do, really) and press it the rest of the way out to the edge with your hands, trying to keep a "lip" at the edge that is a bit thicker than the rest so you get a nice bulge at the crust.  No photos of this as my hands were covered in flour by this point, but the trick is to push out rather than down.  Your dough might be a little elastic, if so just stretch it and let it relax a few times - the gluten will loosen up eventually.  If you find yourself sticking to it at any point, just dust your hands with a little flour.

When making pizza you are supposed to build on a slide (called a "peel") while you pre-heat the stone/tray in the oven in order to get it nice and crazyhot.  I have never bothered doing this, which means I have to cook my pizzas at a lower temperature for longer, which produces less impressive crusts.  I fear that trying to slide a pizza off a peel onto a blazing hot rock would only result in catastrophe, so I've not tried going down that route just yet!

For the sauce, I again cheat a little.  Dollop of passata in the middle of the pizza.  Add copious amounts of garlic, oregano and basil to this dollop.  Swirl around with the back of the spoon until mixed, then spiral outwards until you reach the edge of the pizza.  Sure, you could mix this in a bowl somewhere else, but lazin^H^H^H^H^Hefficiency is a virtue.

 Toppings!  Here you are pretty much free to go nuts. This time we made one with onion, mushroom, capsicum, cherry tomatoes, pineapple, ham and corn (no, seriously, trust me on the corn), and the other with onions, shallots, chives, capsicum, extra garlic, chilli, prawns, cherry tomatoes and feta.

 Assembled and ready for en-cheesinating.  Note the thin covering of flour over absolutely everything.

Cheese! You could use mozzarella for this, but I actually like the extra flavour from a nice tasty cheddar. That would probably get me knifed in Napoli, but I stand by my choice.

Into a hot (200C, or 170-ish fan-forced) for 30 mins or so or until cheese browns.  The less toppings you have the higher heat you can use and still have the cheese brown before the crust gets hard. The more toppings you have the lower heat you have to use and the less impressive the crust will be - faster cooking = better crust. But I love toppings too much to go with the sparse Neapolitan style of just tomato sauce, mozzarella, basil and anchovies.  If you have a good grill in your oven you can put this on as well to help brown the top - although if you're doing multiple pizzas don't forget to switch them around halfway through!  I find swapping places to be a good idea in general - ovens are never quite even. This is where a pre-heated stone would be a winner - you could use lots of toppings and a high heat and the base wouldn't still be uncooked and doughy when the top and edges were done. More sciencing is required!

Some more post-oven shots. This post is already ridiculously long, so why not make it longer?

And the obligatory plate-shot.  Steph put one piece of each pizza on her plate and arranged them nicely for the camera.  However, that's not quite going to cut it for me...

Ahh, that's more like it. Poorly arranged, perhaps, but that's what a plate of pizza should look like!